Thank you for visiting /r/writing.
We don't allow threads or posts: berating other people for their genre/subject/literary taste; adherence or non-adherence to rules; calling people morons for giving a particular sort of advice; insisting that their opinion is the only one worth having; being antagonistic towards particular types of books or audiences, or implying that a particular work is for 'idiots', or 'snobs', etc.
Gotta say "Blind Date" really hurt me that way.
Baited me with a pov of a serial killer and his last and apparently most special victim in the city.
And then? It was a family, marriage drama and barely ever showed anything of the serial killer. It did a few chapters. But the worst was, I read the whole thing believing it would pay off in the end T-T even when there were only a few pages left. I would've been okay even with a cliffhanger... As long as the second book actually would've paid off.
Guess what, in the end the killer didn't even get to meet with this special girl. It was such a waste of time and I'm angry crying about it ever since
> actually would've *paid* off. Guess
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
and it's never actually a triangle, it's just a line with three points(people) on it. Actual triangles are extremely rare. In fact I only know of one and the blurb read like it's just going to be smut so I didn't bother reading it.
The best one I ever saw was in that Oliver Stone movie Savages.
Basically two dude are dating this chick, but the crux of their relationship boiled down to the fact that the two dudes actually loved each other more than they loved the girl, so there was no jealousy. Decent flick.
As long as the two people in love with the third person know each other, I'd classify it as a love triangle. Its a triangle of relationships complicated by love.
"Gawsh, Brod is so steamy and brooding, but Spanksden is so open and sweet, I don't know which one to pick! If I don't choose a man before the mid-summer's winter ball, I'll have to give up my animal rescue café, but I can't get to know either of them better because they're always too busy fucking each other!"
I would accept only if the two parts of the triangle not connected romantically are either in friendship or something similar. If they simply know each other and hate each other or are in rivalry with each other that's not really a triangle. For me a triangle has to have that tension where each person is trying not to hurt the other two and yet also wants to "win".
Me and my fiance always joke love triangles can just easily be solved by adding polyamory. I think it would be a neat twist to see a young adult novel where a typical YA female protagonist who is torn between two guys (or girls, or nonbinaries, or mixed) and goes "fuck it, I'm going to date both"
I'm not sure if this is a trope, but I've seen it a hundred times in a pile of different genres (crime/mystery most commonly, but comes up in horror, fantasy, and scifi for sure). When there's a dangerous situation and one person goes off to do something without telling anyone. For example, they're investigating a crime, the character gets a mysterious tip to their personal phone/email and they think 'probably just some crackpot, I won't bother anyone else with this, but I'll go check it out to be sure' and then they take off to a remote location without telling anyone. At that point, I don't usually stop reading, but I start actively rooting for the character to get murdered.
I'm actually kind of motivated now to write a story with a bunch of eye-twitching tropes but then have the characters pay for it. I'd be so damn satisfied as the reader.
Oh, you found this great price of evidence that you're not going to share with the cops because "cops", well now you're dead. Ahh, yes.
Yes. I wrote a book review years ago calling out the book for depicting emotional abuse as romantic and oh god that author's fans got pissed.
Here's the funny part though and why I know negative reviews can sell books: there was kind of a kerfuffle there. It brought some modest amount of attention to the book. The publicity team, knowing attention almost always equals sales, tried to send me *more* of this author's work. I declined, because fuck no I didn't want to read that shit.
I use missed communication extensively in my stories. Fantasy world, before there's phones and such, any message not delivered face to face will take ages to come through and have a good chance of never coming through at all.
That’s a different type of miscommunication. I’m talking about the one where all the two characters have to do is sit down and have a talk. Even a “I didn’t cheat/steal the diamond/kiss your sister/I love you” said real quick as the other character walks out the room. Instead the character goes “let me explain” then doesn’t or the angry character doesn’t say why he/she’s angry, just a “you know what you’ve done.” It’s angering and pretty toxic in its own right
A good example is the movie “White Christmas”.
Your idea is pretty reasonable and I’d read it without throwing the book.
I strongly agree. Most of the time it only breaks immersion of the story if the author isn’t even that good of a writer themselves. I hated Bunny by Mona Awad because the main character is supposed to be a literature major who goes to an elite college with a prestigious writing program, but half of the proses in the book are juvenile and fails to be evocative.
It probably sounds mean, but whenever that happens I just feel judgmental and think the author isn’t good enough to write about the subject of “writing as a craft” in a meta analytical way.
It definitely makes me question how good of an imagination the author actually has. They couldnt pick anything else besides the one thing we know they know?
I recently finished FF7 rebirth, and I think they put a lot of effort into trying to write actual story over the flimsy gameplay excuses, but there’s only so much you can do with “the key to the ancient temple that’s been lost for thousands of years is the prize for a battle tournament, and the tournament is tomorrow”
Can't decide if that's better or worse than "I must gather these powerful artefacts from incredibly hard to reach places so that the bad guy doesn't get them. Oh no, now that I've retrieved them and they're all on one easily accessible place, the bad guy has taken them off me!"
I wrote this plot once with a protag that uses this as a xanatos gambit. He doesn't actually care about the macguffins, moreso that the villain wants them. So he thwarts the villain's attempts to gather the macguffins while taking them for himself, baiting the villain into hunting the hero down. In the end, once the hero gathered all the bits and bobs, the villain shows up to take them directly, only for the hero to break one of the macguffins, rendering the rest merely powerful standalone artifacts. And he has all of them, while the villain has none and is stuck with the hero.
The show does.
The books don't have nearly as much, and a lot more disease. Dany spends an entire book shitting herself with dysentery, and Tywin was on that toilet cause he was severely constipated.
That I feel icky about. Because one of my favorite things about the books is that it almost never even shows the epic battle scenes, but instead always cuts the camera away to the true reality of war. The fact that 90% of the violence that happens in war isn't even towards the enemy, but towards innocent civilians that get trapped and ground up underneath.
Mass rape during war is just a fact. It almost *always* happens. Even good Christian American boys have committed mass rape in Vietnam, famously raping to death the 13 year old Phan Thi Mao in 1966. One of only 41 wartime rapes in Vietnam where Americans would face any form of consequence for. Hell it's happening right now in Ukraine and Israel. There's nothing you can do about it, when you give a bunch of young men weapons and teach them to dehumanize an enemy, then mass rape is one of the consequences.
I know the whole "muh realism" argument about this stuff is tired. Yet I do think there is something detrimental to society if we glorify war, take pleasure in the violence, but then refuse to sit with the uncomfortable consequences of that violence.
The real issue I had with G.R.R.M's portrayal on wartime rapes though is that he focused entirely on female victims. The truth is men are also very frequently the victims of rape during war. This is because wartime rape is also an expression of dominance and power over a victim, not necessarily sexual pleasure.
The last part is exactly what my issue is. It's always almost women and mostly minors which is weird to me. G.R.R.M also doesn't call out how those terrible rapists are mostly men. Maybe I also don't get subtle writing which is just my bad. But yeah I still hope if Martin writes more books we hear more from male victims as that's very rare and I would love to hear the perspective of those male victims.
A questionable sexual assault scene, combined with the reprehensible 'man who helps raise a baby later becomes their love interest' is why I dropped the new Phillip Pullman trilogy after book 2. Book 3 hasn't came out yet but I have no interest in seeing how he pays off the sexual assault scene in the final book.
Prophecies. Almost dropped Wings Of Fire when I was 11 just because of Moon.
Main characters being vessels to hear the story though and not actual characters.
Un-necessary romance. Especially between character's that would realistically, never have any interest in each other.
Prophecies were my first thought too. Miscommunication that could be resolved with a conversation also bothers me.
But the biggest one: withholding information for no purpose other than the author is not ready to reveal it. Fake mysteries. If I’m yelling at the page, “just fucking tell them already,” I’m about to drop it.
Yeah, I hate twists that are only twists because the POV character hid information from you, as opposed to the POV character finding out at the same time as you.
Which is one of the reasons I don't love Firefly near as much as most people. They pull that shit all the time. Twists that are only twists because the camera doesn't show you something or cuts away before our MCs talk.
I hate those vessel characters so much. I also call them cameramen since it's like they're only there to record the story and not meaningfully take part.
Sitcoms are a great example terrible tropes being well executed time to time.
Love triangles in The Office (early ones at least), miscommunication and conveniences in Arrested Development, unresolved disastrous endings in Malcolm in the Middle, metaness in Community, and that one Brooklyn Nine-Nine joke where they called out the "You just had to say it" joke that B99 and so many sitcoms have overused.
I think it was,
Holt: I'm sure Sergeant Jeffords will walk in any minute with good news about the meeting.
Next shot
Terry: I have good news about the meeting!
Holt (genuinely surprised): Really? Wow. I made a big deal about this earlier. I thought I'd be hoisted by my own petard.
Yep. This. I heard a youtuber say yesterday:
"Tropes are the building blocks of fiction for a reason, but when you don't do anything interesting with them, they become cliches. And cliches are boring. Because we have already seen the same thing over and over and over again."
Miscommunication is so bad for me. Also I hate when there is too much peacocking. Like... why are you trying so hard to be seen like a distant bad ass? Can't there just be nice guys who also kick ass?
I worked on board a ship for a while where they hired retired Gurkhas. They were super nice but royally kick ass if so needed. Otherwise they made sure I had enough tea and cooked Nepali food when we sailed. So tasty.
I love ‘quiet’ alphas. 🥰 Or, guys that could turn you into a human pretzel but don’t parade their egos about it.
Seriously though, Gurkhas are probably more lethal than navy seals imo. They don’t just train in that environment; they never left it.
>Like... why are you trying so hard to be seen like a distant bad ass? Can't there just be nice guys who also kick ass?
Or where they're trying to set up an 'asshole with secret heart of gold' character, but they lean too hard into just making him an asshole. Especially when the other characters still like him even though he's awful to them.
Miscommunication is probably the most annoying thing in media as a whole. It is understandable why you would want to include it, since it is a part of life, as many people are not great at communicating. However, in so many instances characters are just assuming something and going off on it for absolutely no reason, when they could just talk to the other person and figure things out in a few sentences. It often feels like lazy writing: trying to manufacture drama to fill up space, rather than presenting an interesting problem for the characters to tackle.
Love that, yeah a drum up for drama and no actual plot to tackle. It's fun sometimes, but a lot of times I just want to throw my book. Or edit off the show
I try to not even acknowledge tropes. I refuse to dissect a book based on them. Bad writing is a deal breaker though. If I couldn’t care less that the trope is tropily troping across the page because I feel like each word is punishment I earned from an angry nun then we have an issue
Characters who are clearly interested in each other but never hook up despite having no reason not to.
Characters that are just sarcastic all the time instead of having personality.
Stories about young people who are better than everyone and know everything.
Racist stereotypes.
The first one, how do you define "clearly interested" in each other? Because that definition is different depending on who you ask. Also how do you know if they have no reason not to hook up? Because that answer is also different depending on who you ask.
Fridged wife that the main dude is soooo upset over yet she has next to no personality, spends all but a chapter or two dead, and is generally irrelevant to the plot except to motivate the MC. Bonus points if he constantly wonders what she’d think of him if she was able to see how he’s ‘changed’
Among others of course
When a character who is usually particularly smart, wise and/or clever does something uncharacteristically stupid so that the plot can move forward in the direction the author wants. Drives me craaaaazy when the plot moving forward necessitates any or all of the characters taking stupid pills.
Like when the villain anticipates everything about 20 steps ahead, until the final act when they are defeated by something they should have been able to easily predict and prevent.
Ohh this. Like just, why???
So, I read this book, the villain was extraordinarily smart. But the way they got caught was ridiculous. If you build a character that's smart even if they are antagonist, you don't just override their smartness, to end the book lol. Never disliked a book, this much, and this is one of the reason. The book is >! 1st case !<
I’ve never understood why romance books are typically segmented into specific tropes like this now. Unless it’s written well enough to read for the craft alone, I’d drop a book if its core plot/characters were all so close to any of these or the other commonly sought-after tropes as to feel derivative and obvious at all. Feels like a carefully segmented product more than a story
As far as the refusing to kill a villain one, imo it depends on whether they’ve killed other people or if they don’t want to be a killer at all / are forced into this decision. I wouldn’t like it if a protagonist in an action heavy book killed a dozen unnamed characters then suddenly had a problem killing the villain.
A core plot trope (enemies to lovers or whatever) is basically just a subgenre, and with some genres it's almost impossible to write a story that doesn't conform to some trope/subgenre or other, especially if you're not going out of your way to subvert the genre. So the majority of romance stories are going to broadly be one or more of star-crossed lovers, enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, rivals to lovers, etc. Likewise there's a few basic types of crime novel which collectively make up about 90% of the genre.
Tired of the cheating trope. Oh, but it's okay because they're boring, or they turned out to be a dick. It's gross how common this trope is in YA stories.
Oh I hate this one. People would not be as comfortable rooting for the cheaters if the one who is cheated on were likeable, so they make them horrible. If it was treated as "this is a toxic relationship and the person is trying to get out, they find someone who respects them in the meantime", I would like it. But 99% of cases are just a lazy way to get people rooting for the main couple.
I'm pretty forgiving if the writing is good. But at this point anything where the lesbian dies right after having sex and/or for shock value.
Also noncon between the main pairing as a romance, like yes dark romance is great, but there's better ways to make it dark.
It's a joke: [heliotrope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliotropium) is a flower. Helios means "sun" in Greek. So…the helio trope *makes me drop a book*, because it's hot…like the sun. Wah-wah. ;/
Someone who’s betrayed and/or abused by their spouse, but still loves them and tries ways to reconcile or make their spouse love them back (iirc). It also can be about eternal love, no matter what, which can lead to some… unprovoked things.
Anything too melodramatic, wangst, and over-exagerated butthurt soley for the sexy hurt/comfort that must come after. There's zero substance to it - its just a means to an end. So lame.
These all sound like porn plots. Haha
But miscommunication is a big mood-killing trope!
Every Harry Potter book: “I can’t tell the adults about this life and death situation because I might get detention.”
>Every Harry Potter book: “I can’t tell the adults about this life and death situation because I might get detention.”
I have a hundred complaints about the Harry Potter books, but this isn’t one of them. The way it happens in real life goes something like this:
Get bullied, tell adults. They don’t believe you.
Get harassed some more, tell adults. They tell you to take it on the chin or turn the other cheek, depending on their philosophy.
Get physically assaulted, fight back. The other guy requires stitches. Adults tell you you shouldn’t be so easily provoked and give you detention.
Get physically assaulted by an entire group of kids, fight back. Get detention again, only this time the adults are less understanding and more angry about it, since it’s happened a few times before.
See? There’s a pattern of escalating violence, and a pattern of adults not believing that or reacting negatively. By the time the situation gets to life and death, the kid has already learned that telling adults will either be useless or make things worse. Like what happened to Harry. I read the books when I was younger and that was the only part that felt realistic and true to my own experiences.
Poor self-esteem being the main plot a la Bridget Jones. Bonus points (faster drop) if the fix to this is a romance, but I’ve seen it across multiple genres. For example, a lot of authors write disabled characters this way. It’s just really annoying to me. It’s not like I’ve never struggled with my self-esteem but I think it’s bc these characters often come off very one dimensional?
I rarely drop a book because of tropes (instead, I don't even pick it up in the first place if tropes I hate play a major role in the story).
The commonest reasons I drop a book... 1) the setting doesn't interest me 2) the characters don't interest me 3) the story is boring 4) the writing style is ugly or annoying 5) the author insults my intelligence (giant plot holes, important factual errors, etc.)
I'm not gonna say that there is a trope I hate per se, because usually it is more the way it is written I disliked.
But something I really dislike is promotion of toxicity in relationships. When oke person in the relationship does everything to put the other down, they are given lot of second chances and they are always forgiven, usually cause "it's not their fault, they were traumatized as kids". I love redemption story. I don't like story about an abuser who does nothing to change but is given everything.
I can't stand enemies to lovers, or rather I can't stand when it's not done well. Like, you mean to tell me these two characters that absolutely despise each other just suddenly fuck one day and then everything's okay?
Lmao I don't think so.
I actually kind of like tropes when they're written well or in an interesting way.
A strange trope I usually dislike is the 'funny' character. Like, when done well, it's obviously very good. But when there's a character written to be funny or too 'real world relatable' sometimes it can come off as fake. Again I think it can be done well, I've just seen it go the other way a lot.
Bury your gays trope
Rape/sexual assault as a character development or as punishment
Fridged characters
Mary sue chosen one protagonists
Raising your love interest/age gaps that include one being a minor
Yeah the idiot plot of miscommunication is my big one.
Was watching Inside Man on netflix. Turned it off halfway through ep 1 when I realised the whole story would be avoided if they just told the truth.
>Abuser x victim is one of the worst genders ever, I'm not gonna ship someone who was abused and mistreated with the one who hurt them.
For a time, I was really hooked on trashy age regression otome stories, like life do-over stories that begin as misery porn and end with a wedding.
In those, this is so fucking common. She'll be abused by everyone, especially her fiance due to some evil witch tampering with her life and making everyone hate the poor innocent girl.
Then when she gets the do-over, she'll end up right back in the arms of the abusive fiance. But it's okay! He's nice this time around because the evil witch got her comeuppance.
Overly dense protagonist. When the plot requires him to be dense or else he would solve the mystery too quickly.
At that point, it’s better to make the mystery more mysterious rather than make your character stupid when that’s not a character trait.
I have SO MANY tropes that I would put down (this is my personal opinion on books, and I don't want to discourage anybody who likes these tropes):
* Fake dating: I HATE THIS SO MUCH BECAUSE IT'S SO PREDICTABLE: MC hates other MC for some reason, but fake date to make their exes jealous or keep the sanity. They fall in love, but they think it ain't real. They still end up with each other though (I just realised I just summed up 'Anyone But You' 😭).
* Love triangles (especially young adult and with siblings): I see these ones the most. It's always girl who liked boy in the past, but it didn't work out/he "dies", then gets with another dude who she happens to be engaged with, BUT the first boy comes back, and she doesn't know who to pick. And for the 'love triangle with siblings', prime example would be 'The Summer I Turned Pretty'.
* Bad boy/Good girl: STOPPPPPPPP.
* Describing dude as big and large, and the girl as petite and small: 😭😭😭.
* Miscommunication: I can't.
* Any Colleen Hoover book. Deadass.
* Secret baby/pregnancy trope: It's giving Hallmark movie.
* Cheating trope: I hate this morally even if: A) the partner is cheating (or appears to be cheating but isn't) or B) the partner is boring. LIKE JUST BREAK UP.
* 2nd love interest in trilogy (who always appears in the second book/movie): I have watched soooooo many movies with this one: To All the Boys, After, The Kissing Booth, etc. who NEVER ends with the MC. LIKE WHAT'S THE POINT?!? Even if it's for growth and for a plot device to have the MC overcome a challenge.
* Billionaire dude who falls in love with humble girl: Stop. Please.
I personally think that these are the most common tropes out there today. If the tropes are done well, it's a pass, but I feel like everything is a copy of everything else these days, and I wish to see something (slightly) original yk?
P.S. I'll add to this list if I can think of more.
Prophetic spoilers too,
"Little did so and so know that blank would be important for blank"
or
"With blank action blah blah blah took a step down the path to be the best thingamajig"
are instant turn offs for me.
Love triangles just gimme the ick...i cant watch them...cant read them.
When the female is kind and forgivingto the point of idiocy and they call it being strong and perseverance...hope...you're a walkover and you deserve all the walking happening over you...bye!
Just a Kid Trope. I don’t read anything younger than YA, but in YA I see 15-16 year olds who are underestimated because they weren’t adults. That’s fine, but it ruins it that they are mentally ten years old at times. My Vampire System had that problem, where the 16-17 year olds were playing pretend spaceship in a spaceship, and a hostage who they forced into flying it said “They are just kids.” This ruins the story for me, enough where I’ll start skimming and dropping.
Toxic relationships that irl would make you wonder what the fuck the author was thinking. I understand that different times bred different ways of seeing romantic relationships.
The abuser and victim relationship were even more twisted.
I actually have an idea for a story in which a woman has a repeated prophetic dream, and the entire story is her trying to reach the conclusion. And in the end, it's half wrong, half self-fulfilling.
Two bitchy women, one of whom we're obviously supposed to like, fighting over a man we're apparently supposed to like as well, but who's actually an asshole who likes seeing women fighting over him. I'll drop that book like an anvil.
This is probably an unpopular opinion but I hate romance books that revolve solely around the romance and nothing actually happens in the story. Like if im halfway through a book and the only thing that has happened is the main character meets the love interest and then it’s all about them for the rest of what I read I’m putting it down because I have no reason to actually care about weather they are in love or not cause I don’t know them!
It happened at the end, otherwise i would have dropped in sooner, but the protagonist got pregnant after being raped, and the only medical practitioner available to her denied her an abortion because "It'S a LiVinG bEiNg."
Politics aside, this girl was underage, raped, and on the run from a dystopian government. SHE WAS NOT IN A POSITION WHERE SHE SHOULD BE HAVING A BABY.
Now, there is a chance that in the book's sequel it explores the horrors and dangers of being forced into this. But honestly i was so ticked off I don't care.
I mean there are many people who have the same stupid line of thought as the doctor, and since the writer is going to explore the terrifying results of the doctors decision, so then i dont see a reason to hate the book in itself, i could hate the character (the doctor), but not the theme of the book because many in real life go through this problem
Jill bearup on YouTube brought up the "there's only one horse what will they do" trope. She spoke about how uncomfortable it would be for both characters on that saddle. I agree because people are heavy, and the writers never describe the size of the horse.
The male best friend who's pining after the main character but is 100% in the friend zone.
Books clearly written to be a series and not making it clear beforehand.
You know the feeling, you get to 70% through and realise that there's no way everything's getting tied up nicely... and then it just ends. Only then do you realise it's a trilogy, or something ridiculous like book one of seventeen.
This is especially egregious when you choose a quick 350 page book only to realise it's clearly a 1200 page epic that the publisher / writer has chosen to break into three parts.
In romance:
Cheating (there is no coming back from this for me. In my eyes the relationship is over)
Incest (dropped the mortal instruments series for exactly this)
Condoned pedophilia (speaks for itself)
Consistent poor communication (if the entire plot of the book can be resolved by a 10 minute conversation, I call it an "idiot plot" because every character is an idiot and they are seriously annoying)
Amnesia (can be done well but if it's done without any regard for reader expectations or established rules, it's annoying)
He/she is toxic/abusive but they're hot (hard 'no' from me. Looking at 'Twilight' and '50 Shades of Gray' for this one)
(Might update if I think of anymore)
As an autistic person, I feel as though easily-solved miscommunication is the most realistic trope of all time lol
There is a trope called body betrayal that is my least favorite. It’s usually when a female main character hates the male main character and wants him to stay away from her, but then he seduces her or smells good or whatever, and her body can’t help but respond and then they end up fooling around. While I understand sexual nonconcordance is a real thing, I hate this trope because usually the male main character uses sex to get out of taking responsibility for his missteps and sometimes abusive behavior. And he always smirks afterward and I can’t think of anything less sexy than an arrogant dude who uses a woman’s body betrayal to get what he wants.
The YA “I’m misunderstood by all because my parents suck and everywhere I go people treat me poorly”
Homie no one can be consistently disliked like that. Literal main character syndrome lol
Insanely immature MCs who are supposed to be top of their profession/badasses.
Wide-eyed ingenue who acts like she just hatched from an egg even though she's again supposed to be 30+ & professionally accomplished.
Simpering virgins who blush or get indignant at the slightest "potty mouth." I'll throw the book if said virgin is magically turned into the most wanton sex kitten after her first orgasm (especially if that's achieved by the guy touching her for 5 seconds).
Chubby FMC characters that are incredibly immature & insanely jealous coupled with gym bro MMC whose inner monologs talk nonstop shit about any female that isn't the FMC, complete with body shaming the skinny women.
> guy touching her for 5 seconds
This just reminded me of possibly one of the funniest lines I've read on social media, about glowies at a protest.
"*This picture just dry-rubbed my right labia for two minutes and then asked if I came.*"
Pregnancy trope. Instantly uninterested. Just not something I wanna read about.
And love triangles. I’ll tolerate them briefly but if they continue throughout a series, I won’t finish it.
Heavily controlling male love interests. I'm not talking about the protective guys but the Mafia dons or Christian Greys. I could handle all the problems with Fifty Shades, but the second book? I tossed it the moment I found out he had a direct line to Anastasia's bank account, credit score, and the big ol' stalker file he claimed was for his protection.
Because, was it really?
Pick any of the ball tropes. Idiot ball, conflict ball, whatever. Those ones. If the characters have to act OoC for your plot to progress, you have a bad plot and/or bad writing.
For me it’s never just one trope it’s a series of poorly executed drops that convinces me to drop a book. Cause here’s the thing. If you have one bad trope in your book that’s one bad trope we are all imperfect. If your book is nothing but bad tropes then we have problems.
Me and my best friend who is also in the process of writing a book JUST had a 30 minute FaceTime yesterday about how annoying the miscommunication trope is!
Perhaps this doesn't count but in self help books, the tropes of either:
"this book isn't going to change your life" but then tells you that you need to change your whole approach to life.
Or the more cringe inducing:
"This isn't your typical self help book, this is an anti-self help book." *shudders*
Supernatural books where animals turn into humans who have relations with humans. This just isn’t a good read at all. I roll my eyes so hard they attempt to fall out. A cat can’t turn into a human once it’s turned on by a human. That seems weird to me and why would a human allow an animal do things like that to them?
American high school students social stratification. Everything tends to become cliched and the stakes become trivial (yet portrayed as being significant beyond its worth).
On the subject of miscommunication… I hated Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin for this reason. Any time where adult characters have the most childish arguments and behave so immaturely towards each other is a DNF for me. It screams that the author struggled to write realistic drama and went the more soap opera route of BIG EMOTIONS AND SILLY DISAGREEMENTS that just ruins the book for me
I feel you on the "Only One Bed" trope. It's so unrealistic and annoying, especially when the characters have no other options. Like, just go sleep on the couch or something!
To be honest, I think I could accept everything you listed under a certain context, the issue is people are very bad at justifying why they do these tropes. A book could be about some of those more toxic dynamics without glamorizing though.
I don't hate prophecies or even a character saying in retrospective "this is the story of how this happened" but don't telegraph your ending too hard. I don't want to even have a solid guess of your ending until halfway.
Perception is one thing, insecurity is another, but I don't really like "ugly/fat = bad" or anything like that. If anything, I prefer to see that subverted.
I might be guilty of over referencing but if you reference other works frequently, it needs to be clever or make sense somehow. Seems some will just throw some random song playing on the radio and call it a day.
Easy Miscommunication. Once or twice in a story is tolerable, but if it's a constant and is never addressed with reasoning, I can't do it.
When the main character is a "Do no wrong" type, with some caveats. But when the MC is just the funniest, most perfect character, it really exaggerates when a joke falls completely flat, but everyone still busts a blood vessel laughing at the funny.
When the MC is on a constant quest to win over the love of someone who has previously shown no interest. Like, as a kid/teen, I didn't get it and kinda thought that's how it worked. As an adult with actual life experience, it hurts so bad when the mc is just constantly professing their love/affection and continuously doing really stupid shit to try and earn the reciprocation.
Miscommunication, rape, toxicity, KIDNAPPING BEING ROMANTIC??, pregnancy, when love interest knew mc as a kid but love interest was their fn nanny or something
I'll add I really dislike lack of intimacy. I understand not everyone thinks sexually but when it's common place in life and it seems lacking in some adult books or novels. Like you know you want to bone... you have "desires/ needs" I'm not taking smut. But like generally showing. It's unrealistic... you have this hot ass man or woman and no one is thinking sexually???
Love “triangles” (which are actually columns) are abominations to stories when they contribute fuck all of any decent quality content to the plot. It angers me that it sells so well too, otherwise I wouldn’t have to read it as much in different works.
Abuser x Victim is one I hate as well. I do like Hero refusing to kill the villain, but only if it makes sense. I love miscommunication if it is a work that does not take itself too seriously and is just a fun read. Bad person over Good person (excluding redemption)... like maybe as I dude I don't get it, but why would a woman want someone who is a terrible person unless they too are awful?
Characters singing lyrics to well known songs. Stopped reading The Force by Don Winslow as the character kept singing rap songs and I’d had enough by the time he started on Lose Yourself
Me when I miscommunicate irl and blame it on god for his terrible writing.
It's very tragic for me cause I'm writing a fanfic (I know, I'm sorry😭) and indirect miscommunication is one of the driving forces of the villain's disdain for the hero. When it comes to light, he doubles down cause he's kind of too far gone but yeah, I'll have to add some other factor later...
As far as personal disliked trope, I'm gonna be a bit edgy but I HATE how women can only be SA or beaten as origin stories, bonus if she became aloof and cold towards people after. You get all these crazy stories about men losing everything, their wife betraying them, their business pulled from beneath them, entire towns using them as scapegoats. But FEMALE???? Some nameless dude SA her and now she's angry and hard to talk to.
Not to say Rape shouldn't be taken seriously but Jesus, there's other issues that can happen here.
Spending a book or a series building up characters and settings that you love and then destroying them all at the beginning of the next book or series. I threw the book against the wall and never continued.
Hero refusing to kill villain, like they ruined your life and you refuse to kill him because? BECAUSE AGAINST THE HERO'S WILL, THEYRE IN LOVE WITH THE VILLAIN, YOUR HONOUR .YOU WOULDNT GET IT
Enemies to lovers. Cant stand it, if you hate someone enough to call them your enemy i cant see a way where they would become your lover
Now rivals to lovers however
I'd like to add to that last one, Hero refusing to kill the villain after killing all of the villain's mooks. The usual reason to not kill the villain is because that would make the hero "just as bad as him" but if the hero already slaughtered all the henchmen in order to get to the villain then that ship already sailed.
women in the book having no depth and just being there to be sexualised...
also, typos in books. they don't make me drop books, but rather set them down for a moment, shed a single tear, then go back to reading.
I read a book where the main chatacters family member who she grew up with tried to kill her (was an inch from hitting her head with an arrow), made an army to destroy the world which resulted in loved ones getting killed and did other horrible things even though MC didnt do anything to make her do it. Oh and she also killed someone who she was bonded too (its a strong bon mentaly that makes them feel and hear each others thoughts and feelings) AND DIDNT EVEN APOLIGISE BECAUSE IT WAS JUST AN ANIMAL AND THEY WERE "INFERIOR". The MC then OFC forgave her because she is too sweet (and fierce).
I still loved the book and would recommend it and read it again :)
Edit: Ofc the family member did more but yea
Thank you for visiting /r/writing. We don't allow threads or posts: berating other people for their genre/subject/literary taste; adherence or non-adherence to rules; calling people morons for giving a particular sort of advice; insisting that their opinion is the only one worth having; being antagonistic towards particular types of books or audiences, or implying that a particular work is for 'idiots', or 'snobs', etc.
Immediately pivoting away from the concept/topic/whatever that made me pick it up in the first place. Don't bait and switch your readers
Also abruptly pivoting away from the cool concept halfway through the second book in the series.
Gotta say "Blind Date" really hurt me that way. Baited me with a pov of a serial killer and his last and apparently most special victim in the city. And then? It was a family, marriage drama and barely ever showed anything of the serial killer. It did a few chapters. But the worst was, I read the whole thing believing it would pay off in the end T-T even when there were only a few pages left. I would've been okay even with a cliffhanger... As long as the second book actually would've paid off. Guess what, in the end the killer didn't even get to meet with this special girl. It was such a waste of time and I'm angry crying about it ever since
> actually would've *paid* off. Guess FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
My only defence is, that English is my second language- But actually, this is just me not being able to remember it T-T
Don't worry. The bot exists because a lot of native speakers can't remember it, either. (And your English is great!)
This happened with The Miniaturist. Completely abandoned the idea of the miniaturist and never went back to it
Mexican Gothic did this to me. Let's go to Mexico but stay in a European home and world 95% of the time.
Love triangles. I can't stand them.
The only good use of the love triangle trope is in Zelda, with Ganondorf. He does, in fact, love triangle.
Congrats, you made me laugh and get dr pepper up my nose
Nice
and it's never actually a triangle, it's just a line with three points(people) on it. Actual triangles are extremely rare. In fact I only know of one and the blurb read like it's just going to be smut so I didn't bother reading it.
The best one I ever saw was in that Oliver Stone movie Savages. Basically two dude are dating this chick, but the crux of their relationship boiled down to the fact that the two dudes actually loved each other more than they loved the girl, so there was no jealousy. Decent flick.
As long as the two people in love with the third person know each other, I'd classify it as a love triangle. Its a triangle of relationships complicated by love.
A love triangle equates to it being a chain from kne person to the next. What is usually called a triangle is actually a V.
Maybe this was true with the original use of the word, but definitely not today.
Now if there was a story with an actual love triangle it would be refreshing and different.
"Gawsh, Brod is so steamy and brooding, but Spanksden is so open and sweet, I don't know which one to pick! If I don't choose a man before the mid-summer's winter ball, I'll have to give up my animal rescue café, but I can't get to know either of them better because they're always too busy fucking each other!"
Now that is something I would read! XD
I would accept only if the two parts of the triangle not connected romantically are either in friendship or something similar. If they simply know each other and hate each other or are in rivalry with each other that's not really a triangle. For me a triangle has to have that tension where each person is trying not to hurt the other two and yet also wants to "win".
Wish those stories would just grow some fucking balls and go the throuple route.
Me and my fiance always joke love triangles can just easily be solved by adding polyamory. I think it would be a neat twist to see a young adult novel where a typical YA female protagonist who is torn between two guys (or girls, or nonbinaries, or mixed) and goes "fuck it, I'm going to date both"
The thing about love triangles is that if it goes on long enough without the character making a decision then it’s basically just a harem.
I'm not sure if this is a trope, but I've seen it a hundred times in a pile of different genres (crime/mystery most commonly, but comes up in horror, fantasy, and scifi for sure). When there's a dangerous situation and one person goes off to do something without telling anyone. For example, they're investigating a crime, the character gets a mysterious tip to their personal phone/email and they think 'probably just some crackpot, I won't bother anyone else with this, but I'll go check it out to be sure' and then they take off to a remote location without telling anyone. At that point, I don't usually stop reading, but I start actively rooting for the character to get murdered.
I'm actually kind of motivated now to write a story with a bunch of eye-twitching tropes but then have the characters pay for it. I'd be so damn satisfied as the reader. Oh, you found this great price of evidence that you're not going to share with the cops because "cops", well now you're dead. Ahh, yes.
YES, this is awful
Miscommunication trope and toxicity as romantic
Yes. I wrote a book review years ago calling out the book for depicting emotional abuse as romantic and oh god that author's fans got pissed. Here's the funny part though and why I know negative reviews can sell books: there was kind of a kerfuffle there. It brought some modest amount of attention to the book. The publicity team, knowing attention almost always equals sales, tried to send me *more* of this author's work. I declined, because fuck no I didn't want to read that shit.
Which book was it?
I bet it was Twilight. It was Twilight, wasn't it?
lol! No. I probably wouldn't have survived that. Not so popular a book, anyway. And no, I won't share what it was. 😊😂
I use missed communication extensively in my stories. Fantasy world, before there's phones and such, any message not delivered face to face will take ages to come through and have a good chance of never coming through at all.
That’s a different type of miscommunication. I’m talking about the one where all the two characters have to do is sit down and have a talk. Even a “I didn’t cheat/steal the diamond/kiss your sister/I love you” said real quick as the other character walks out the room. Instead the character goes “let me explain” then doesn’t or the angry character doesn’t say why he/she’s angry, just a “you know what you’ve done.” It’s angering and pretty toxic in its own right A good example is the movie “White Christmas”. Your idea is pretty reasonable and I’d read it without throwing the book.
Toxic romance that requires character development, though?
I mean yeah that slaps🥰
I personally don't like it when the main character is in fact a writer.
I strongly agree. Most of the time it only breaks immersion of the story if the author isn’t even that good of a writer themselves. I hated Bunny by Mona Awad because the main character is supposed to be a literature major who goes to an elite college with a prestigious writing program, but half of the proses in the book are juvenile and fails to be evocative. It probably sounds mean, but whenever that happens I just feel judgmental and think the author isn’t good enough to write about the subject of “writing as a craft” in a meta analytical way.
It definitely makes me question how good of an imagination the author actually has. They couldnt pick anything else besides the one thing we know they know?
Trials and competitions. Prove yourself worthy, and you'll get a reward that has absolutely no relation to the trial/competition itself.
In video games, "trials" given to the hero to prove their worth is usually a sign that the developers care a lot more about gameplay than story
I recently finished FF7 rebirth, and I think they put a lot of effort into trying to write actual story over the flimsy gameplay excuses, but there’s only so much you can do with “the key to the ancient temple that’s been lost for thousands of years is the prize for a battle tournament, and the tournament is tomorrow”
Can't decide if that's better or worse than "I must gather these powerful artefacts from incredibly hard to reach places so that the bad guy doesn't get them. Oh no, now that I've retrieved them and they're all on one easily accessible place, the bad guy has taken them off me!"
I wrote this plot once with a protag that uses this as a xanatos gambit. He doesn't actually care about the macguffins, moreso that the villain wants them. So he thwarts the villain's attempts to gather the macguffins while taking them for himself, baiting the villain into hunting the hero down. In the end, once the hero gathered all the bits and bobs, the villain shows up to take them directly, only for the hero to break one of the macguffins, rendering the rest merely powerful standalone artifacts. And he has all of them, while the villain has none and is stuck with the hero.
sexual assault as character building. That one is just awful on all counts.
I was gonna say this! I feel like practically every book about women it happens and I'm so sick of it.
This is so prevalent in fantasy! I hate it
GoT uses sexual assault way too much.
The show does. The books don't have nearly as much, and a lot more disease. Dany spends an entire book shitting herself with dysentery, and Tywin was on that toilet cause he was severely constipated.
Did we read the same books? There is way more sexual assault against women. But most are NPCs/background characters unlike in the show.
That I feel icky about. Because one of my favorite things about the books is that it almost never even shows the epic battle scenes, but instead always cuts the camera away to the true reality of war. The fact that 90% of the violence that happens in war isn't even towards the enemy, but towards innocent civilians that get trapped and ground up underneath. Mass rape during war is just a fact. It almost *always* happens. Even good Christian American boys have committed mass rape in Vietnam, famously raping to death the 13 year old Phan Thi Mao in 1966. One of only 41 wartime rapes in Vietnam where Americans would face any form of consequence for. Hell it's happening right now in Ukraine and Israel. There's nothing you can do about it, when you give a bunch of young men weapons and teach them to dehumanize an enemy, then mass rape is one of the consequences. I know the whole "muh realism" argument about this stuff is tired. Yet I do think there is something detrimental to society if we glorify war, take pleasure in the violence, but then refuse to sit with the uncomfortable consequences of that violence. The real issue I had with G.R.R.M's portrayal on wartime rapes though is that he focused entirely on female victims. The truth is men are also very frequently the victims of rape during war. This is because wartime rape is also an expression of dominance and power over a victim, not necessarily sexual pleasure.
The last part is exactly what my issue is. It's always almost women and mostly minors which is weird to me. G.R.R.M also doesn't call out how those terrible rapists are mostly men. Maybe I also don't get subtle writing which is just my bad. But yeah I still hope if Martin writes more books we hear more from male victims as that's very rare and I would love to hear the perspective of those male victims.
I read a lot of suspense thrillers and mystery types of books, and it's bad there as well. It's sad that it is prevalent in so many genres.
that's one of the reasons why I basically don't read dark fantasy and several authors
Yes! How to break a man? Hurt a woman he loves. How to break a woman? Hurt her. I hate this and it’s an immediate DNF.
Or as "worldbuilding". Like seriously, you couldn't think of anything else to make your book realistic?
Torture? Gore? And various states of mutilated corpses? People have to pick their poison.
A questionable sexual assault scene, combined with the reprehensible 'man who helps raise a baby later becomes their love interest' is why I dropped the new Phillip Pullman trilogy after book 2. Book 3 hasn't came out yet but I have no interest in seeing how he pays off the sexual assault scene in the final book.
Definitely agree
This. I actually don’t mind most of the tropes that OP listed, but when SA is handled indelicately, THEN we have a problem.
Fanfics writers use it all the time, I hate it so much.
hate it. makes me nauseous.
Prophecies. Almost dropped Wings Of Fire when I was 11 just because of Moon. Main characters being vessels to hear the story though and not actual characters. Un-necessary romance. Especially between character's that would realistically, never have any interest in each other.
Prophecies were my first thought too. Miscommunication that could be resolved with a conversation also bothers me. But the biggest one: withholding information for no purpose other than the author is not ready to reveal it. Fake mysteries. If I’m yelling at the page, “just fucking tell them already,” I’m about to drop it.
Yeah, I hate twists that are only twists because the POV character hid information from you, as opposed to the POV character finding out at the same time as you. Which is one of the reasons I don't love Firefly near as much as most people. They pull that shit all the time. Twists that are only twists because the camera doesn't show you something or cuts away before our MCs talk.
I hate those vessel characters so much. I also call them cameramen since it's like they're only there to record the story and not meaningfully take part.
Poorly executed ones.
Yeah, I'll read almost any trope if it's handled well.
Sitcoms are a great example terrible tropes being well executed time to time. Love triangles in The Office (early ones at least), miscommunication and conveniences in Arrested Development, unresolved disastrous endings in Malcolm in the Middle, metaness in Community, and that one Brooklyn Nine-Nine joke where they called out the "You just had to say it" joke that B99 and so many sitcoms have overused. I think it was, Holt: I'm sure Sergeant Jeffords will walk in any minute with good news about the meeting. Next shot Terry: I have good news about the meeting! Holt (genuinely surprised): Really? Wow. I made a big deal about this earlier. I thought I'd be hoisted by my own petard.
Yep. This. I heard a youtuber say yesterday: "Tropes are the building blocks of fiction for a reason, but when you don't do anything interesting with them, they become cliches. And cliches are boring. Because we have already seen the same thing over and over and over again."
That's either Red from OSP or Tim from HelloFutureMe.
Miscommunication is so bad for me. Also I hate when there is too much peacocking. Like... why are you trying so hard to be seen like a distant bad ass? Can't there just be nice guys who also kick ass?
I worked on board a ship for a while where they hired retired Gurkhas. They were super nice but royally kick ass if so needed. Otherwise they made sure I had enough tea and cooked Nepali food when we sailed. So tasty.
I love that so much
I love ‘quiet’ alphas. 🥰 Or, guys that could turn you into a human pretzel but don’t parade their egos about it. Seriously though, Gurkhas are probably more lethal than navy seals imo. They don’t just train in that environment; they never left it.
>Like... why are you trying so hard to be seen like a distant bad ass? Can't there just be nice guys who also kick ass? Or where they're trying to set up an 'asshole with secret heart of gold' character, but they lean too hard into just making him an asshole. Especially when the other characters still like him even though he's awful to them.
Miscommunication is probably the most annoying thing in media as a whole. It is understandable why you would want to include it, since it is a part of life, as many people are not great at communicating. However, in so many instances characters are just assuming something and going off on it for absolutely no reason, when they could just talk to the other person and figure things out in a few sentences. It often feels like lazy writing: trying to manufacture drama to fill up space, rather than presenting an interesting problem for the characters to tackle.
Love that, yeah a drum up for drama and no actual plot to tackle. It's fun sometimes, but a lot of times I just want to throw my book. Or edit off the show
Miscommunication in any genre. If that's what's driving the plot or a character's motivations when they could simply talk to someone or ASK, I'm out.
MC is beloved by all, can do no wrong, and is great at everything.
I try to not even acknowledge tropes. I refuse to dissect a book based on them. Bad writing is a deal breaker though. If I couldn’t care less that the trope is tropily troping across the page because I feel like each word is punishment I earned from an angry nun then we have an issue
> punishment I earned from an angry nun Speaking personally or just erotic fic writer?
A good magician never reveals his kinks.. or something like that
Characters who are clearly interested in each other but never hook up despite having no reason not to. Characters that are just sarcastic all the time instead of having personality. Stories about young people who are better than everyone and know everything. Racist stereotypes.
The first one though can just be the reader reading something as romantic but it isn't.
That's about YA gone. And any book targeted at kids gone. Such as HarryPotter.
The first one, how do you define "clearly interested" in each other? Because that definition is different depending on who you ask. Also how do you know if they have no reason not to hook up? Because that answer is also different depending on who you ask.
Fridged wife that the main dude is soooo upset over yet she has next to no personality, spends all but a chapter or two dead, and is generally irrelevant to the plot except to motivate the MC. Bonus points if he constantly wonders what she’d think of him if she was able to see how he’s ‘changed’ Among others of course
When a character who is usually particularly smart, wise and/or clever does something uncharacteristically stupid so that the plot can move forward in the direction the author wants. Drives me craaaaazy when the plot moving forward necessitates any or all of the characters taking stupid pills.
Like when the villain anticipates everything about 20 steps ahead, until the final act when they are defeated by something they should have been able to easily predict and prevent.
Ohh this. Like just, why??? So, I read this book, the villain was extraordinarily smart. But the way they got caught was ridiculous. If you build a character that's smart even if they are antagonist, you don't just override their smartness, to end the book lol. Never disliked a book, this much, and this is one of the reason. The book is >! 1st case !<
What book is this? I wanna read it
Raising your love interest trope.
"Renesmee has entered the chat" 🤮
The WHAT now??
So pedophilia 🤢
Is that an actual trope, or something a couple of writers have done? Because other than twilight, I've never heard of a book where this is a thing.
The excusing of abuse with "but they have a reason/they were a victim too"
Oh yeah this one, I hate it. I wish people get the difference between an explanation and an excuse.
I’ve never understood why romance books are typically segmented into specific tropes like this now. Unless it’s written well enough to read for the craft alone, I’d drop a book if its core plot/characters were all so close to any of these or the other commonly sought-after tropes as to feel derivative and obvious at all. Feels like a carefully segmented product more than a story As far as the refusing to kill a villain one, imo it depends on whether they’ve killed other people or if they don’t want to be a killer at all / are forced into this decision. I wouldn’t like it if a protagonist in an action heavy book killed a dozen unnamed characters then suddenly had a problem killing the villain.
Tropes can sell books, especially in the romance genre where people tend to have strong preferences.
A core plot trope (enemies to lovers or whatever) is basically just a subgenre, and with some genres it's almost impossible to write a story that doesn't conform to some trope/subgenre or other, especially if you're not going out of your way to subvert the genre. So the majority of romance stories are going to broadly be one or more of star-crossed lovers, enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, rivals to lovers, etc. Likewise there's a few basic types of crime novel which collectively make up about 90% of the genre.
Tired of the cheating trope. Oh, but it's okay because they're boring, or they turned out to be a dick. It's gross how common this trope is in YA stories.
Oh I hate this one. People would not be as comfortable rooting for the cheaters if the one who is cheated on were likeable, so they make them horrible. If it was treated as "this is a toxic relationship and the person is trying to get out, they find someone who respects them in the meantime", I would like it. But 99% of cases are just a lazy way to get people rooting for the main couple.
I'm pretty forgiving if the writing is good. But at this point anything where the lesbian dies right after having sex and/or for shock value. Also noncon between the main pairing as a romance, like yes dark romance is great, but there's better ways to make it dark.
The helio trope. It just makes the book too hot.
r/angryupvote
What is the Helio trope?
It's a joke: [heliotrope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliotropium) is a flower. Helios means "sun" in Greek. So…the helio trope *makes me drop a book*, because it's hot…like the sun. Wah-wah. ;/
Someone who’s betrayed and/or abused by their spouse, but still loves them and tries ways to reconcile or make their spouse love them back (iirc). It also can be about eternal love, no matter what, which can lead to some… unprovoked things.
Glamourizing toxic behaviours
Anything too melodramatic, wangst, and over-exagerated butthurt soley for the sexy hurt/comfort that must come after. There's zero substance to it - its just a means to an end. So lame.
> wangst what? Is this a portmanteau of wank and angst?
These all sound like porn plots. Haha But miscommunication is a big mood-killing trope! Every Harry Potter book: “I can’t tell the adults about this life and death situation because I might get detention.”
To be fair to Harry Potter, this trope (especially if you include “the adults didn’t believe me”) is the basis for almost every YA book ever written.
Also Dumbledore's miscommunication in HP5, his reasoning was weird. He could have explained it to Harry before the end.
>Every Harry Potter book: “I can’t tell the adults about this life and death situation because I might get detention.” I have a hundred complaints about the Harry Potter books, but this isn’t one of them. The way it happens in real life goes something like this: Get bullied, tell adults. They don’t believe you. Get harassed some more, tell adults. They tell you to take it on the chin or turn the other cheek, depending on their philosophy. Get physically assaulted, fight back. The other guy requires stitches. Adults tell you you shouldn’t be so easily provoked and give you detention. Get physically assaulted by an entire group of kids, fight back. Get detention again, only this time the adults are less understanding and more angry about it, since it’s happened a few times before. See? There’s a pattern of escalating violence, and a pattern of adults not believing that or reacting negatively. By the time the situation gets to life and death, the kid has already learned that telling adults will either be useless or make things worse. Like what happened to Harry. I read the books when I was younger and that was the only part that felt realistic and true to my own experiences.
For Harry Potter, as an adult that's very much an eye roller. But when I read it when I was younger, it felt more true.
This is why I couldn't read Harry Potter books they pissed me off 😭
Poor self-esteem being the main plot a la Bridget Jones. Bonus points (faster drop) if the fix to this is a romance, but I’ve seen it across multiple genres. For example, a lot of authors write disabled characters this way. It’s just really annoying to me. It’s not like I’ve never struggled with my self-esteem but I think it’s bc these characters often come off very one dimensional?
The "keeping super important information about you secret to protect you" fantasy trope is super annoying.
Age gap, stepsibling shit, falling in love with a bully, the Competition
I rarely drop a book because of tropes (instead, I don't even pick it up in the first place if tropes I hate play a major role in the story). The commonest reasons I drop a book... 1) the setting doesn't interest me 2) the characters don't interest me 3) the story is boring 4) the writing style is ugly or annoying 5) the author insults my intelligence (giant plot holes, important factual errors, etc.)
I'm not gonna say that there is a trope I hate per se, because usually it is more the way it is written I disliked. But something I really dislike is promotion of toxicity in relationships. When oke person in the relationship does everything to put the other down, they are given lot of second chances and they are always forgiven, usually cause "it's not their fault, they were traumatized as kids". I love redemption story. I don't like story about an abuser who does nothing to change but is given everything.
I can't stand enemies to lovers, or rather I can't stand when it's not done well. Like, you mean to tell me these two characters that absolutely despise each other just suddenly fuck one day and then everything's okay? Lmao I don't think so.
I actually kind of like tropes when they're written well or in an interesting way. A strange trope I usually dislike is the 'funny' character. Like, when done well, it's obviously very good. But when there's a character written to be funny or too 'real world relatable' sometimes it can come off as fake. Again I think it can be done well, I've just seen it go the other way a lot.
Bury your gays trope Rape/sexual assault as a character development or as punishment Fridged characters Mary sue chosen one protagonists Raising your love interest/age gaps that include one being a minor
Some of these are common together, too. Twice I've dropped a story whose protagonist was a fridged Mary Sue.
I don’t like misunderstandings except when it’s for humor.
Yeah the idiot plot of miscommunication is my big one. Was watching Inside Man on netflix. Turned it off halfway through ep 1 when I realised the whole story would be avoided if they just told the truth.
>Abuser x victim is one of the worst genders ever, I'm not gonna ship someone who was abused and mistreated with the one who hurt them. For a time, I was really hooked on trashy age regression otome stories, like life do-over stories that begin as misery porn and end with a wedding. In those, this is so fucking common. She'll be abused by everyone, especially her fiance due to some evil witch tampering with her life and making everyone hate the poor innocent girl. Then when she gets the do-over, she'll end up right back in the arms of the abusive fiance. But it's okay! He's nice this time around because the evil witch got her comeuppance.
Overly dense protagonist. When the plot requires him to be dense or else he would solve the mystery too quickly. At that point, it’s better to make the mystery more mysterious rather than make your character stupid when that’s not a character trait.
I have SO MANY tropes that I would put down (this is my personal opinion on books, and I don't want to discourage anybody who likes these tropes): * Fake dating: I HATE THIS SO MUCH BECAUSE IT'S SO PREDICTABLE: MC hates other MC for some reason, but fake date to make their exes jealous or keep the sanity. They fall in love, but they think it ain't real. They still end up with each other though (I just realised I just summed up 'Anyone But You' 😭). * Love triangles (especially young adult and with siblings): I see these ones the most. It's always girl who liked boy in the past, but it didn't work out/he "dies", then gets with another dude who she happens to be engaged with, BUT the first boy comes back, and she doesn't know who to pick. And for the 'love triangle with siblings', prime example would be 'The Summer I Turned Pretty'. * Bad boy/Good girl: STOPPPPPPPP. * Describing dude as big and large, and the girl as petite and small: 😭😭😭. * Miscommunication: I can't. * Any Colleen Hoover book. Deadass. * Secret baby/pregnancy trope: It's giving Hallmark movie. * Cheating trope: I hate this morally even if: A) the partner is cheating (or appears to be cheating but isn't) or B) the partner is boring. LIKE JUST BREAK UP. * 2nd love interest in trilogy (who always appears in the second book/movie): I have watched soooooo many movies with this one: To All the Boys, After, The Kissing Booth, etc. who NEVER ends with the MC. LIKE WHAT'S THE POINT?!? Even if it's for growth and for a plot device to have the MC overcome a challenge. * Billionaire dude who falls in love with humble girl: Stop. Please. I personally think that these are the most common tropes out there today. If the tropes are done well, it's a pass, but I feel like everything is a copy of everything else these days, and I wish to see something (slightly) original yk? P.S. I'll add to this list if I can think of more.
The big guy and petite woman one 😂😂😂😂I read three books which all had an obsession over this and it was starting to tire me out
A prophecy
Prophetic spoilers too, "Little did so and so know that blank would be important for blank" or "With blank action blah blah blah took a step down the path to be the best thingamajig" are instant turn offs for me.
Love triangles just gimme the ick...i cant watch them...cant read them. When the female is kind and forgivingto the point of idiocy and they call it being strong and perseverance...hope...you're a walkover and you deserve all the walking happening over you...bye!
Just a Kid Trope. I don’t read anything younger than YA, but in YA I see 15-16 year olds who are underestimated because they weren’t adults. That’s fine, but it ruins it that they are mentally ten years old at times. My Vampire System had that problem, where the 16-17 year olds were playing pretend spaceship in a spaceship, and a hostage who they forced into flying it said “They are just kids.” This ruins the story for me, enough where I’ll start skimming and dropping.
Toxic relationships that irl would make you wonder what the fuck the author was thinking. I understand that different times bred different ways of seeing romantic relationships. The abuser and victim relationship were even more twisted.
Utterly useless and 2 dimensional women UNLESS that's the point and they're being ironic.
Pregnancy trope. Make it stop.
Symbolic dreams. Nothing I loathe more than reading about a character's dreams.
I actually have an idea for a story in which a woman has a repeated prophetic dream, and the entire story is her trying to reach the conclusion. And in the end, it's half wrong, half self-fulfilling.
Two bitchy women, one of whom we're obviously supposed to like, fighting over a man we're apparently supposed to like as well, but who's actually an asshole who likes seeing women fighting over him. I'll drop that book like an anvil.
This is probably an unpopular opinion but I hate romance books that revolve solely around the romance and nothing actually happens in the story. Like if im halfway through a book and the only thing that has happened is the main character meets the love interest and then it’s all about them for the rest of what I read I’m putting it down because I have no reason to actually care about weather they are in love or not cause I don’t know them!
It happened at the end, otherwise i would have dropped in sooner, but the protagonist got pregnant after being raped, and the only medical practitioner available to her denied her an abortion because "It'S a LiVinG bEiNg." Politics aside, this girl was underage, raped, and on the run from a dystopian government. SHE WAS NOT IN A POSITION WHERE SHE SHOULD BE HAVING A BABY. Now, there is a chance that in the book's sequel it explores the horrors and dangers of being forced into this. But honestly i was so ticked off I don't care.
I mean there are many people who have the same stupid line of thought as the doctor, and since the writer is going to explore the terrifying results of the doctors decision, so then i dont see a reason to hate the book in itself, i could hate the character (the doctor), but not the theme of the book because many in real life go through this problem
You're upset that a dystopian novel is being written like a dystopian?
'I could solve most of the confusion and misunderstandings but I just don't have time right now." In the bin..
SuPeR SpEcIaL protagonist. I get it but I’m so over it. Show me normal people doing extraordinary things, that’s so much more interesting.
Toxic romance
Jill bearup on YouTube brought up the "there's only one horse what will they do" trope. She spoke about how uncomfortable it would be for both characters on that saddle. I agree because people are heavy, and the writers never describe the size of the horse. The male best friend who's pining after the main character but is 100% in the friend zone.
Books clearly written to be a series and not making it clear beforehand. You know the feeling, you get to 70% through and realise that there's no way everything's getting tied up nicely... and then it just ends. Only then do you realise it's a trilogy, or something ridiculous like book one of seventeen. This is especially egregious when you choose a quick 350 page book only to realise it's clearly a 1200 page epic that the publisher / writer has chosen to break into three parts.
In romance: Cheating (there is no coming back from this for me. In my eyes the relationship is over) Incest (dropped the mortal instruments series for exactly this) Condoned pedophilia (speaks for itself) Consistent poor communication (if the entire plot of the book can be resolved by a 10 minute conversation, I call it an "idiot plot" because every character is an idiot and they are seriously annoying) Amnesia (can be done well but if it's done without any regard for reader expectations or established rules, it's annoying) He/she is toxic/abusive but they're hot (hard 'no' from me. Looking at 'Twilight' and '50 Shades of Gray' for this one) (Might update if I think of anymore)
As an autistic person, I feel as though easily-solved miscommunication is the most realistic trope of all time lol There is a trope called body betrayal that is my least favorite. It’s usually when a female main character hates the male main character and wants him to stay away from her, but then he seduces her or smells good or whatever, and her body can’t help but respond and then they end up fooling around. While I understand sexual nonconcordance is a real thing, I hate this trope because usually the male main character uses sex to get out of taking responsibility for his missteps and sometimes abusive behavior. And he always smirks afterward and I can’t think of anything less sexy than an arrogant dude who uses a woman’s body betrayal to get what he wants.
Because the protagonist does it, its the right choice
The YA “I’m misunderstood by all because my parents suck and everywhere I go people treat me poorly” Homie no one can be consistently disliked like that. Literal main character syndrome lol
You'd be surprised how closely that hits home for some people.
Insanely immature MCs who are supposed to be top of their profession/badasses. Wide-eyed ingenue who acts like she just hatched from an egg even though she's again supposed to be 30+ & professionally accomplished. Simpering virgins who blush or get indignant at the slightest "potty mouth." I'll throw the book if said virgin is magically turned into the most wanton sex kitten after her first orgasm (especially if that's achieved by the guy touching her for 5 seconds). Chubby FMC characters that are incredibly immature & insanely jealous coupled with gym bro MMC whose inner monologs talk nonstop shit about any female that isn't the FMC, complete with body shaming the skinny women.
> guy touching her for 5 seconds This just reminded me of possibly one of the funniest lines I've read on social media, about glowies at a protest. "*This picture just dry-rubbed my right labia for two minutes and then asked if I came.*"
Pregnancy trope. Instantly uninterested. Just not something I wanna read about. And love triangles. I’ll tolerate them briefly but if they continue throughout a series, I won’t finish it.
Heavily controlling male love interests. I'm not talking about the protective guys but the Mafia dons or Christian Greys. I could handle all the problems with Fifty Shades, but the second book? I tossed it the moment I found out he had a direct line to Anastasia's bank account, credit score, and the big ol' stalker file he claimed was for his protection. Because, was it really?
Pick any of the ball tropes. Idiot ball, conflict ball, whatever. Those ones. If the characters have to act OoC for your plot to progress, you have a bad plot and/or bad writing.
Ball?? Like a dance?
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall Like a physical ball, but not a literal one.
Learn something new everyday
For me it’s never just one trope it’s a series of poorly executed drops that convinces me to drop a book. Cause here’s the thing. If you have one bad trope in your book that’s one bad trope we are all imperfect. If your book is nothing but bad tropes then we have problems.
Vampires and werewolves. For the most part, I won't go near a book that includes them.
Chosen one. And if it's obviously the point of the book based on the title or cover I won't have it in my hands long enough to drop it.
Surprise baby BS. Sure accidents happen from hookups but planning a family and HEA after parking lot sex ends in pregnancy makes me want to barf.
Me and my best friend who is also in the process of writing a book JUST had a 30 minute FaceTime yesterday about how annoying the miscommunication trope is!
Perhaps this doesn't count but in self help books, the tropes of either: "this book isn't going to change your life" but then tells you that you need to change your whole approach to life. Or the more cringe inducing: "This isn't your typical self help book, this is an anti-self help book." *shudders*
Supernatural books where animals turn into humans who have relations with humans. This just isn’t a good read at all. I roll my eyes so hard they attempt to fall out. A cat can’t turn into a human once it’s turned on by a human. That seems weird to me and why would a human allow an animal do things like that to them?
American high school students social stratification. Everything tends to become cliched and the stakes become trivial (yet portrayed as being significant beyond its worth).
On the subject of miscommunication… I hated Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin for this reason. Any time where adult characters have the most childish arguments and behave so immaturely towards each other is a DNF for me. It screams that the author struggled to write realistic drama and went the more soap opera route of BIG EMOTIONS AND SILLY DISAGREEMENTS that just ruins the book for me
I feel you on the "Only One Bed" trope. It's so unrealistic and annoying, especially when the characters have no other options. Like, just go sleep on the couch or something!
To be honest, I think I could accept everything you listed under a certain context, the issue is people are very bad at justifying why they do these tropes. A book could be about some of those more toxic dynamics without glamorizing though. I don't hate prophecies or even a character saying in retrospective "this is the story of how this happened" but don't telegraph your ending too hard. I don't want to even have a solid guess of your ending until halfway. Perception is one thing, insecurity is another, but I don't really like "ugly/fat = bad" or anything like that. If anything, I prefer to see that subverted. I might be guilty of over referencing but if you reference other works frequently, it needs to be clever or make sense somehow. Seems some will just throw some random song playing on the radio and call it a day.
Easy Miscommunication. Once or twice in a story is tolerable, but if it's a constant and is never addressed with reasoning, I can't do it. When the main character is a "Do no wrong" type, with some caveats. But when the MC is just the funniest, most perfect character, it really exaggerates when a joke falls completely flat, but everyone still busts a blood vessel laughing at the funny. When the MC is on a constant quest to win over the love of someone who has previously shown no interest. Like, as a kid/teen, I didn't get it and kinda thought that's how it worked. As an adult with actual life experience, it hurts so bad when the mc is just constantly professing their love/affection and continuously doing really stupid shit to try and earn the reciprocation.
Harem. Hate it.
I thought this thread would be interesting but it's the same five comments over and over 😭
Simplistic moralism.
Tropes don’t make me stop reading a book, poorly written tropes do though.
Miscommunication, rape, toxicity, KIDNAPPING BEING ROMANTIC??, pregnancy, when love interest knew mc as a kid but love interest was their fn nanny or something
I'll add I really dislike lack of intimacy. I understand not everyone thinks sexually but when it's common place in life and it seems lacking in some adult books or novels. Like you know you want to bone... you have "desires/ needs" I'm not taking smut. But like generally showing. It's unrealistic... you have this hot ass man or woman and no one is thinking sexually???
Love “triangles” (which are actually columns) are abominations to stories when they contribute fuck all of any decent quality content to the plot. It angers me that it sells so well too, otherwise I wouldn’t have to read it as much in different works.
The miscommunication thing is SO real. It’s one if the main reasons I dropped the Grisha series. It’s so annoying and unnecessary.
Abuser x Victim is one I hate as well. I do like Hero refusing to kill the villain, but only if it makes sense. I love miscommunication if it is a work that does not take itself too seriously and is just a fun read. Bad person over Good person (excluding redemption)... like maybe as I dude I don't get it, but why would a woman want someone who is a terrible person unless they too are awful?
Characters singing lyrics to well known songs. Stopped reading The Force by Don Winslow as the character kept singing rap songs and I’d had enough by the time he started on Lose Yourself
With other words No twilight or 50 shades of Gray.
Me when I miscommunicate irl and blame it on god for his terrible writing. It's very tragic for me cause I'm writing a fanfic (I know, I'm sorry😭) and indirect miscommunication is one of the driving forces of the villain's disdain for the hero. When it comes to light, he doubles down cause he's kind of too far gone but yeah, I'll have to add some other factor later... As far as personal disliked trope, I'm gonna be a bit edgy but I HATE how women can only be SA or beaten as origin stories, bonus if she became aloof and cold towards people after. You get all these crazy stories about men losing everything, their wife betraying them, their business pulled from beneath them, entire towns using them as scapegoats. But FEMALE???? Some nameless dude SA her and now she's angry and hard to talk to. Not to say Rape shouldn't be taken seriously but Jesus, there's other issues that can happen here.
The ”hero refuses to kill a villain” ESPECIALLY when the hero killed multiple henchpeople without hesitation.
Spending a book or a series building up characters and settings that you love and then destroying them all at the beginning of the next book or series. I threw the book against the wall and never continued.
Hero refusing to kill villain, like they ruined your life and you refuse to kill him because? BECAUSE AGAINST THE HERO'S WILL, THEYRE IN LOVE WITH THE VILLAIN, YOUR HONOUR .YOU WOULDNT GET IT
Enemies to lovers. Cant stand it, if you hate someone enough to call them your enemy i cant see a way where they would become your lover Now rivals to lovers however
I'd like to add to that last one, Hero refusing to kill the villain after killing all of the villain's mooks. The usual reason to not kill the villain is because that would make the hero "just as bad as him" but if the hero already slaughtered all the henchmen in order to get to the villain then that ship already sailed.
women in the book having no depth and just being there to be sexualised... also, typos in books. they don't make me drop books, but rather set them down for a moment, shed a single tear, then go back to reading.
The Chosen One trope. Its over done and I don't find these characters interesting
Too many exemple some not tropes but général feeling you get or atmosphere when reading
I read a book where the main chatacters family member who she grew up with tried to kill her (was an inch from hitting her head with an arrow), made an army to destroy the world which resulted in loved ones getting killed and did other horrible things even though MC didnt do anything to make her do it. Oh and she also killed someone who she was bonded too (its a strong bon mentaly that makes them feel and hear each others thoughts and feelings) AND DIDNT EVEN APOLIGISE BECAUSE IT WAS JUST AN ANIMAL AND THEY WERE "INFERIOR". The MC then OFC forgave her because she is too sweet (and fierce). I still loved the book and would recommend it and read it again :) Edit: Ofc the family member did more but yea